Korean tutoring startup offers jobs for elderly
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Say founders Cho Yong-min, left, Jenny Cho, center, and Quan Nguyen / Courtesy of SAY
SAY links demand for Korean language with aging society
By Kim Bo-eun
A startup has connected the demand for Korean language education with the growing senior population in Korea.
Demand for learning Korean is growing due to the influence of Hallyu, or Korean pop culture spreading overseas.
Meanwhile, Korea is an aging society ?senior citizens aged 65 and above accounted for 13.2 percent of the population last year. Accordingly, an increasing number of people are seeking work after retirement.
The thought of linking the demand for work and the possible supply of jobs occurred to one of the founders of the new company, Cho Yong-min, while he was serving his military duty at a welfare center for senior citizens in Seoul.
“He saw that many senior citizens were not doing much, yet believed in the value they could create,” Jenny Cho, another founder, said in an interview with The Korea Times.
At the time, Cho was a student at Princeton. He reached out to a professor at his school, and as a result, he connected seniors in Korea with students taking Korean language classes at Princeton through an online platform.
The exchanges were later offered for students at Yale as well.
After several years of experimenting, the social volunteer project developed into a business.
SAY
In January, the two Chos and Quan Nguyen founded SAY, a platform through which Korean senior citizens teach students Korean.
SAY now has 22 instructors and has sold over 1,000 lessons in the past year.
Seventy-five percent of its teachers are aged 50 and above. They are retired professionals with backgrounds in the corporate sector as well as education.
“We value empowering seniors,” Nguyen said.
“Korea is one of the fastest aging societies in the world and many seniors are retiring and in need of jobs. We felt this was a great place to step in.”
SAY got started with funding from personal care product company Yuhan-Kimberly, which is involved in projects for senior citizens, and from the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s 50 Plus Foundation.
Among its students 40 percent are based in Korea and 60 percent abroad _ including the U.S., Singapore, China and Japan.
“Many students based abroad want to learn Korean for career reasons, while for others it is due to an interest in Korean pop culture, or because they have a Korean spouse,” Nguyen said.
Students in Korea are mostly English-language instructors.
With help from an instructor at Yonsei University’s Foreign Language Institute, the founders developed SAY’s own curriculum _ which offers conversation-based classes ranging from levels one to five. Students taking level five classes are able to discuss issues such as North Korea’s nuclear threats.
Nguyen, who has passed the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) II’s 4th grade, took some of the classes earlier to improve his Korean.
Nguyen, who is from the U.S., had no ties to Korea but started learning the language in a class he took when he was a university student.
“My mom used to watch K-dramas and my college friends were listening to K-pop,” Nguyen recalled.
After he started learning Korean, he developed a greater interest in Korea, which prompted him to come to Seoul on a one-year exchange program.
Nguyen’s experience in Korea brought him back, this time for work. He recently earned a visa for residency.
Win-win strategy
SAY benefits not only senior citizens in providing them jobs but also students, the founders said.
“Previously we hired college students as teachers _ but we found they were busy with their studies and many left in search of better jobs,” Cho said.
“However, senior citizens have the time to teach and can also offer students more with the richer life experiences they have.”
SAY does not require its instructors to hold licenses to teach Korean, but subjects the applicants to rigorous training under a program it has developed.
According to SAY, 98 percent of its students rated the courses five out of five in their evaluations. Seventy percent of them come back and take more courses.
“It is our social mission to connect generations,” Cho said _ and this is what SAY stands for _ Seniors and Youth.